UPDATE: Since publishing this story it has been reported by SubjectPoker.com that a representative from the US Department of Justice has denied any funds were released or unfrozen. Pokerfuse has contacted eGaming Review, who originally reported that an account was released according to an unnamed FTP source, but we have yet to receive a response.
It has been reported that the US Department of Justice has released one account in Ireland that belongs to Full Tilt Poker. The estimated value of that account is between $30 million and $50 million.
EGaming Review (EGR) reported that the funds that were released represent more than one third of the outstanding money still owed to US players and the account was “one of nine FTP accounts frozen in Ireland.” Still, no time frame has been set to begin returning those funds.
Earlier this week Bradley Franzen pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, accepting funds in connection with illegal gambling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering as part of a plea agreement. According to the press release by the United States Attorney Southern District of New York:
FRANZEN admitted that in early 2011 he had been asked to help Full Tilt Poker deal with a $60 million shortfall created by the company’s inability to find a payment processor to process transactions involving U.S. player accounts. The company was facing the shortfall because it continued to credit funds to player accounts despite being unable to actually debit (or “pull”) funds from customers.
EGR sites a source inside of FTP as stating that in addition to the funds frozen by the DOJ, some banks were taking it upon themselves to freeze the accounts of FTP as a precaution, even though they had not been ordered to do so by the DOJ. EGR quotes their source as saying:
Banks that weren’t even subject to restraining orders started shutting down because they thought “we’ve got to be careful, the Americans are after us.” We actually had to ask the prosecutors to call these banks and tell them they weren’t interested in them.
With regards to paying US players EGR’s source was quoted as saying:
There are a lot of factors involved. Some of that is the $60m backlog referenced in the Franzen case, some is the bank accounts that voluntarily decided to restrain funds, and some is the status of negotiations with the Southern District.
All of those issues together contribute to creating an impediment to paying players back, an impediment which wouldn’t be there if each of those things didn’t exist.
Though the news is encouraging to US players that have had their funds frozen since “Black Friday,” the start of the World Series of Poker is upon us and many players are relying on those funds to be able to participate in the tournament series.
Correction:The article previously stated that the account that was unfrozen was reportedly worth between $100m and $150m. The report actually stated that the account that was unfrozen was worth “more than a third of the US$100m to $150m still owed to US players.” The article has been corrected to reflect this.
